I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the future of the resume. To be blunt, the traditional paper resume is under attack on many fronts from its digital cousin. Tools like Linkedin, about.me, Vizify and even my own company’s social resume platform can, in many cases, replace the paper resume altogether.

But to be realistic, the hiring world still runs on the paper resume. All the applicant tracking systems require you to upload one and it’s still the best way to show the chronological order of your past experience. And to my knowledge there have never been as many resume writers as there are today. Something is keeping them in business.

I’m not sure when it started but in the past few years I have detected signs that the traditional way of applying is changing. If you think about it, your paper resume is what you did but your social resume is who you are – companies want to know what you are like in real life. So it makes sense that your social resume will play a part at some point in the hiring process. By reading your tweets and other posts it gives them a sense of your character.

As proof of your social media accounts being favored over the traditional resume, I’d like to offer the following stories and examples.

Vala Afshar, the Chief Marketing Officer of Boston based Enterasys hired someone in marketing by making them apply via Twitter. He didn’t ask for a resume, instead the candidates had to submit their social media links including their Klout score.

No Resume Required. The news blog Business Insider sometimes posts jobs requiring only a Linkedin profile and some writing samples. [link]

People are blogging for jobs. You can set up a personal blog and invite potential employers to contact you.

Social is trending. A recent study by Jobvite claims that candidates found through social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are more likely to be hired.

Companies like Shiftgig & JobOn are already storing your work history in the cloud.

For a growing number of roles, the web is certainly becoming your resume. IT people can now be found on sites like GitHub and StackOverflow while graphic designers can be sourced from Dribbble and Behance. There are even sites popping up for blue collar type workers to store their online profiles.

So what’s next for our paper friend? Well, I think its not going away anytime soon. But its relevancy is slowly being ripped away over time. In 5-10 years I believe there will be more and better alternatives to applying for a job. The phrase “send me your resume” will mean send me your digital profile complete with verified identity authentication among all your social profiles, work history and internet links.

One day in the future perhaps, paper resumes may even come back in style as the the next generation of candidates seek to stand out in a world flooded with digital resumes.

Wouldn’t that be something!

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